UCT students build SA's first jumping robot

The University of Cape Town's Dr Amir Patel and his team of engineering students have built South Africa's first jumping robot, to further the general state of research within robotics as we know it.

The team has named the robot Baleka - a Zulu word for "run" - and spent two years designing and optimising the robot.

Patel - a senior lecturer with the Department of Electrical Engineering - studies the movement of animals and applies this research to robotics, essentially allowing robots to adopt and mimic these movements.

The future plan is to develop Baleka even further, so that it can also run.

The research for this will include Patel and his team analysing the movement of the arms while a human being is running, since they play an important role in acceleration and deceleration.